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4973dc5 After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was. capitalism inevitability inspirational marxism resistance socialism apathy Terry Eagleton
514329b A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil. politics socialism Terry Eagleton
157aeaa "Socialism" is no more an evil word than "Christianity." Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve." -- equality inquisition socialism stalin Kurt Vonnegut
cbc093d Genuine equality means not treating everyone the same, but attending equally to everyone's different needs. equality marxism social-justice socialism Terry Eagleton
a42b8ca Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It's purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature. economy politcal-pandering socialism Thomas Sowell
c3c2f8f In progressive societies the concentration[of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty. socialism wealth Will Durant
04606da But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing towards a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it nasty. socialism G.K. Chesterton
10a1551 Everyone should get dirt on his hands each day. Doctors, intellectuals. Politicians, most of all. How can we presume to uplift the life of the working man, if we don't respect his work? socialism work Barbara Kingsolver
0d2ece0 Many things in this period have been hard to bear, or hard to take seriously. My own profession went into a protracted swoon during the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher decade, and shows scant sign of recovering a critical faculty--or indeed any faculty whatever, unless it is one of induced enthusiasm for a plausible consensus President. (We shall see whether it counts as progress for the same parrots to learn a new word.) And my own cohort, the left, shared in the general dispiriting move towards apolitical, atonal postmodernism. Regarding something magnificent, like the long-overdue and still endangered South African revolution (a jagged fit in the supposedly smooth pattern of axiomatic progress), one could see that Ariadne's thread had a robust reddish tinge, and that potential citizens had not all deconstructed themselves into Xhosa, Zulu, Cape Coloured or 'Eurocentric'; had in other words resisted the sectarian lesson that the masters of apartheid tried to teach them. Elsewhere, though, it seemed all at once as if competitive solipsism was the signifier of the 'radical'; a stress on the salience not even of the individual, but of the trait, and from that atomization into the lump of the category. Surely one thing to be learned from the lapsed totalitarian system was the unwholesome relationship between the cult of the masses and the adoration of the supreme personality. Yet introspective voyaging seemed to coexist with dull group-think wherever one peered about among the formerly 'committed'. Traditionally then, or tediously as some will think, I saw no reason to discard the Orwellian standard in considering modern literature. While a sort of etiolation, tricked out as playfulness, had its way among the non-judgemental, much good work was still done by those who weighed words as if they meant what they said. Some authors, indeed, stood by their works as if they had composed them in solitude and out of conviction. Of these, an encouraging number spoke for the ironic against the literal mind; for the generously interpreted interest of all against the renewal of what Orwell termed the 'smelly little orthodoxies'--tribe and Faith, monotheist and polytheist, being most conspicuous among these new/old disfigurements. In the course of making a film about the decaffeinated hedonism of modern Los Angeles, I visited the house where Thomas Mann, in another time of torment, wrote . My German friends were filling the streets of Munich and Berlin to combat the recrudescence of the same old shit as I read: The path to this concept of enlightenment is not to be found in the pursuit of self-pity, or of self-love. Of course to be merely a political animal is to miss Mann's point; while, as ever, to be an apolitical animal is to leave fellow-citizens at the mercy of Ideolo'. For the sake of argument, then, one must never let a euphemism or a false consolation pass uncontested. The truth seldom lies, but when it does lie it lies somewhere in between. apoliticism argument atheism berlin bought-priesthood cape-coloureds cold-war communism conviction critical-thinking enlightenment euphemism eurocentricism faith film george-hw-bush george-orwell german-people germany groupthink hedonism humanism individualism irony journalism left-wing-politics lies literary-criticism literature los-angeles margaret-thatcher monotheism munich orthodoxy personality-politics politics polytheism populism postmodernism potus progress radical-politics religion right-wing-politics ronald-reagan russia science sectarianism self-love self-pity socialism solipsism south-africa soviet-union thomas-mann totalitarianism tribalism truth united-states xhosa-people zulu-people Christopher Hitchens
8de45eb To be part of a family, or any community, is to have duties and responsibility, to be bound by the rules of that group. community duties family friendship relationship responsibility rules socialism Robin Hobb
5f824be We all know how 'modern democracies take loaves from the wealthy.' It's the slipups in the 'pass them out to the poor' department that inspire a study of Economics. economics redistribution-of-wealth socialism P.J. O'Rourke
ab727f0 Judas became the spokesman of all those who through the centuries would protest the ornamentation of the Christian cult and would feel that, when the best of gold and jewels were given to the God Who made them, there was some slight made to the poor - not because they were interested in the poor, but because they were envious of that wealth. liberalism money social-gospel socialism Fulton J. Sheen
c7f7e3b It takes just as much training to get along with people. Only, training by yourself in the mountains won't do you any good. You need to surround yourself with others. As you get to know them, of course you take the chance that you'll end up hurting them, or they'll end up hurting you. One of those things might very well happen. That's the only way we learn... about others, and about ourselves. socialism Natsuki Takaya
cce4ac1 "[Free trade agreements] are trade agreements that don't brilliant bush capitalism communism corporations corporatocracy corruption coup-d-état democratic dictator fascism free-trade genius gore government green-party inefficiency intelligent jefferson lincoln nader obama politics progressive protectionism ralph-nader reform rich socialism terrorism transparency washington Ralph Nader
00cc953 Implicit in the stare of those eyes, the power of those knobbly hands, was labor's historic threat of violence against capital. capitalism labor socialism synecdoche violence Edmund Morris
b644929 It is from the death of the social that socialism will emerge, as it is from the death of God that religions emerge. religion simulation social socialism Jean Baudrillard
611d506 Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property. I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew--at least they claimed to be Communists--couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves. bourgeois class-struggle class-warfare communists frequently-misquoted hypocrisy socialism John Steinbeck
9a77746 I do not deny, but strongly affirm, the right of the State to interfere to cure a great evil. I say that in this case it would interfere to create a great evil; and I am not going to be turned from the discussion of that direct issue to bottomless botherations about Socialism and Individualism, or the relative advantages of always turning to the right and always turning to the left. politics socialism G.K. Chesterton
9b45b0c "All conservative ideologies justify existing inequities as the natural order of things, inevitable outcomes of human nature. If the very rich are naturally so much more capable than the rest of us, why must they be provided with so many artificial privileges under the law, so many bailouts, subsidies and other special considerations - at our expense? Their "naturally superior talents" include unprincipled and illegal subterfuge such as price-fixing, stock manipulation, insider training, fraud, tax evasion, the legal enforcement of unfair competition, ecological spoliation, harmful products and unsafe work conditions. One might expect naturally superior people not to act in such rapacious and venal ways. Differences in talent and capacity as might exist between individuals do not excuse the crimes and injustices that are endemic to the corporate business system." capitalism class class-struggle competition socialism Michael Parenti
ccdb371 Now, quite apart from the fact that, from the point of view of the Earther, socialism suffers the devastating liability of only exhibiting internal contradictions when you are trying to use it as an adjunct to your own stupidity (unlike capitalism, which again, from the point of view of the Earther, happily has them built in from the start), it is the case that because Free Enterprise got there first and set up the house rules, it will always stay at least one kick ahead of its rivals. earthers economics free-enterprise socialism Iain M. Banks
e9e717a The supreme principle of socialism is that man takes precedence over things, life over property, and hence, work over capital; that power follows creation, and not possession; that man must not be governed by circumstances, but circumstances must be governed by man. political-philosophy socialism work Erich Fromm
4c1ce1d You might think that the Left could have a regime-change perspective of its own, based on solidarity with its comrades abroad. After all, Saddam's ruling Ba'ath Party consolidated its power by first destroying the Iraqi communist and labor movements, and then turning on the Kurds (whose cause, historically, has been one of the main priorities of the Left in the Middle East). When I first became a socialist, the imperative of international solidarity was the essential if not the defining thing, whether the cause was popular or risky or not. I haven't seen an anti-war meeting all this year at which you could even guess at the existence of the Iraqi and Kurdish opposition to Saddam, an opposition that was fighting for 'regime change' when both Republicans and Democrats were fawning over Baghdad as a profitable client and geopolitical ally. Not only does the 'peace' movement ignore the anti-Saddam civilian opposition, it sends missions to console the Ba'athists in their isolation, and speaks of the invader of Kuwait and Iran and the butcher of Kurdistan as if he were the victim and George W. Bush the aggressor. anti-war ba-ath-party baghdad communism democratic-party-united-states george-w-bush invasion-of-kuwait iran-iraq-war iraq iraq-war iraqi-communist-party iraqi-kurdistan kurdish-people kuwait labour-movement leftism middle-east opposition-to-the-iraq-war peace-movement republican-party-united-states saddam-hussein socialism Christopher Hitchens
48f1ebe I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist. If that saying doesn't convince you of the fatuousness of left vs. right labels, nothing will. libertarianism politics republicanism socialism Nassim Nicholas Taleb
52e10e8 I have been studying the principles of socialism deeply of late, and I came to the conclusion that I must join the cause. It looked good to me. You work for the equal distribution of property and start in by swiping all you can and sitting on it. Ah, noble scheme! Me for it! socialism P.G. Wodehouse
d94b132 Let the Unions become engines for the working people to right their wrongs. Not benefit societies, or burial clubs. Let the Unions become civilian regiments to fight in the cause of the people. socialism unions Richard Llewellyn
3648aa8 The Koran is empathetic about the rights of other religions to practice their own beliefs. It unequivocally condemns attacks on civilians as a violation of Islam. It states that suicide, of any type, is an abomination. The tactic of suicide bombing, equated by many of the new atheists with Islam, did not arise from the Muslim world. This kind of terror, in fact, has its roots in radical Western ideologies, especially Leninism, not religion. And it was the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist group that draws its support from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka, which invented the suicide vest for their May 1991 suicide assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Suicide bombing is what you do when you do not have artillery or planes or missiles and you want to create maximum terror for an occupying power. It was used by secular anarchists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They bequeathed to us the first version of the car bomb: a horse-drawn wagon laden with explosives that was ignited on September 16, 1920, on Wall Street. The attack was carried out by Mario Buda, an Italian immigrant, in protest over the arrest of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. It left 40 people dead and wounded more than 200. Suicide bombing was adopted later by Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and Hamas. But even in the Middle East, suicide bombing is not restricted to Muslims. In Lebanon during the suicide attacks in the 1980s against French, American and Israeli targets, only eight suicide bombings were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were the work of communists and socialists. Three were carried out by Christians. communism islam socialism suicide suicide-bombing terrorism Chris Hedges
111cf37 If you ask a conservative for a statement of his political convictions, he may well say that he has none, and that the greatest heresy of modernity is precisely to see politics as a matter of convictions as though one could recuperate, at the level of political purpose, the consoling certainty which once was granted by religious faith. In another sense, however, conservatism does rest in a system of belief, and is opposed as much to the theory as to the practice of socialist and liberal politics. conservatives convictions liberalism religion socialism Roger Scruton
399f94d I've had enough of it already. Shining armour. Dawn parades. Forced marches. Midnight inspections. Penalties for sloppy salutes, uncombed crests, talking after lights out. The man's mad. socialism David Gemmell
91d71bb From Smith's principle that labor is the true measure of price--or, as Warren phrased it, that cost is the proper limit of price--these three men (Josiah Warren, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx) made the following deductions: that the natural wage of labor is its product; that this wage, or product, is the only just source of income (leaving out, of course, gift, inheritance, etc.); that all who derive income from any other source abstract it directly or indirectly from the natural and just wage of labor; that this abstracting process generally takes one of three forms, interest, rent, and profit; that these three constitute the trinity of usury, and are simply different methods of levying tribute for the use of capital; that, capital being simply stored-up labor which has already received its pay in full, its use ought to be gratuitous, on the principle that labor is the only basis of price; that the lender of capital is entitled to its return intact, and nothing more; that the only reason why the banker, the stockholder, the landlord, the manufacturer, and the merchant are able to exact usury from labor lies in the fact that they are backed by legal privilege, or monopoly; and that the only way to secure to labor the enjoyment of its entire product, or natural wage, is to strike down monopoly. economics labor ownership property socialism Frank H Brooks
40ebbee Socialists claim to be in favor of equitable redistribution of income and wealth, but who determines what is equitable and does the actual redistribution? redistribution socialism Dinesh D'Souza
e554607 Any person advocating Communism, Socialism, or Anarchism, advocating refusal to enlist in case of war, or advocating alliance with Russia in any war whatsoever, shall be subject to trial for high treason, with a minimum penalty of twenty years at hard labor in prison, and a maximum of death on the gallows, or other form of execution which the judges may find convenient. communism draft-dodging russia socialism treason Sinclair Lewis
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